


other hearts are sick of the same bruise

by Catherines_Collections



Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: A Fever You Can't Sweat Out (Album), Cocaine, Growing Up, M/M, Pre-Fever Era, Touring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 02:04:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14727885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catherines_Collections/pseuds/Catherines_Collections
Summary: The city screams,Are you ready for ruin?And Ryan thinks:yes.





	other hearts are sick of the same bruise

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from a John Keats poem. 
> 
> I own nothing, enjoy.

  
  
Ryan feels like he’s watching the world play out through an old camera lens- each angle blurry, ill focused, every movement captured in odd shapes. It’s glamour and glow and Brendon Urie in slow focus with every shot.

They’re on the bus and Brendon’s laughing, shine and sparkle and too big for the too small town their playing, when he falls onto Ryan’s shoulder. The bus windows are wide with the night, reflecting all the burning stars. Ryan doesn’t look for his reflection next to Brendon’s.

Brendon leans close and away from where Spencer and Shane are laughing on the bus, whispers, “From here, everything looks like it could be home.”

The words end on a choked out laugh, cheeks coloring and drunk on something Ryan doesn’t have a name for. Brendon smiles and falls in closer.

Ryan doesn’t pull away when Brendon takes his hand and leans into his shoulder. The laugh Brendon buries in his neck aches like a bruise.

Ryan hums, doesn’t disagree.

.

Vegas has a way of burning the heart out of anything and spinning it into something new.  
  
Brendon’s singing in his basement, in their garage, on coffee shop stages, recording auditions, selling out stadiums, shaping the world beneath his shoes on a basement table- all glitter and show and wide smiles.  
  
Ryan watches, plays, writes and composes. He follows and leads, and the nights erupt around them in colors and buses and promises.  
  
Brendon laughs when he falls into him, all the alcohol staining his cheeks pink. His eyes are wide and shining and Ryan wonders what else he could see if he looked close enough.

Brendon says, _this is going to be something,_ too loud with too many teeth, and Ryan tells him, _if you want it to be._

Ryan can still feel his smile when Brendon leans in to kiss him.

  
.

Sometimes, Ryan likes to think he isn’t hallucinating all the white in the breaks between raging color. It’s a reassurance that it exists outside of his mind- tangible and anything other than permanent.

It’s everywhere, _is_ everything. Melted from the scattered hotels and burning city lights and faded onto their bus, piling into the corners and crevices.

He reaches a hand towards the bus ceiling for contrast, feels Brendon breathing against his side. It’s still white, but also less. He clenches his fist and watches the skin go pink when he opens his palm.

Brendon’s running until he can’t into everywhere he can reach, and Ryan’s staying still. Ryan wonders if he knows silver burns when it gets too hot.

He closes his eyes and tries to block it all out.  
  
  
.

When Ryan wakes he doesn’t know where he is. It’s not unusual, but still unwelcome.

It’s slow like the world’s resetting itself in calibrations; everything is beating but not in sync. It’s a cascade of a hundred different rhythms that threaten to tear it all apart behind his eyes, and he’s lost in it, counts the heartbeats echoing in his head.  
  
His ears are ringing and his brain feels like liquid, all of it spinning, and he can’t place any of it.

There’s a hand on his chest, fingers drumming along his wrist with nails digging in slightly, sure to leave a mark. He groans in sync with the heartbeats, and then there’s a laugh, breath brushing against the back of his neck.

Brendon whispers, steady, shaking him careful like he’s something too easy to break, “Come on, Ryan. Come on, we’re gonna miss it.”

Ryan doesn’t know what there is to miss. There’s a million different cities and all but one are already missing the kid with the silver tongue and golden voice. He’s a treasure box in every city, ruby red slippers that slip them into places he shouldn't be allowed in when he taps them.

Brendon’s the kid always spilling over into something new and shining, and Ryan wonders if he knows it, too.

Brendon laughs when Ryan finally moves, sleep shaking and loose, and Brendon takes his hand, curling their fingers together when he pulls him forward. Ryan follows.  
  
  
.  


Ryan follows and follows and follows. 

He wonders if Brendon will ever ask him to stop.

  
.

 

The world compresses itself into city lights and parties that last until someone tells them to stop. Sometimes, he wakes up on an abandoned hotel room with no memory and a cell phone burning in his pocket. Ryan doesn’t answer.

Brendon shifts on the bed, sheets kicked away and curtains drawn, and groans, “I’m never doing that again.”

He’s not yet twenty, a few missing months scorching on the edges of Ryan’s. He’s bordering the line of too young and old enough, torn between age and mentality. It doesn't make any of it worse, even if sometimes Ryan thinks it should.

Ryan throws an arm over his eyes and laughs like he hasn’t said the words a hundred times before. Brendon sighs and pushes closer, stealing sheet and heat and Ryan, and melts into it.

.  


Brendon stares when Ryan tells him there should add more white on the bus. _As a contrast_ , he adds on the end, the last words a near silent hiss like they’re being pulled from between his teeth.

Brendon scrunches his nose, tracing shapes into his thigh and says, “Why? White’s boring. It’s not even a color, just absence.”

Ryan shrugs, sees Spencer glance their way across the bus. He doesn’t say, _absence is the point,_ just settles for watching Brendon’s fingers create new patterns, thinks _stars stars and more stars_ with every line.

“White’s empty,” Ryan says, when Brendon draws a circle with an arrow through in on his thigh, and Brendon cocks his head like he’s still waiting for the connection. “Sometimes empty’s nice.”

Brendon hums when he says, “I think the world’s already empty enough, though.”

He doesn’t look back once he notices Spencer behind them, turning to him with a smile, taking fingertips and shape with him.

Ryan doesn’t think it’s fair for the boy with the coat of many colors to talk about emptiness.

.  


The days they aren’t crowded in the bus are spent rehearsing and composing, pretending sideways glances don’t mean anything outside of the night.

Most nights are hotel rooms and white powder, spark and Brendon’s laugh playing on repeat through the bus. He brushes Ryan when he sits, and everything goes sharp when Brendon takes his hand.

Every city has the same streets, same lights and audience and music, but they only get them for a night.

The city screams, _Are you ready for ruin?_

And Ryan thinks: _yes_.

.  


Spencer pulls him down one night, and Ryan doesn’t think about the shape next to him missing, a few feet feeling further with Spencer’s eyes on his.

“I don’t know what you’re doing,” Spencer says, careful and searching, “but I hope you do.” He stares like Ryan’s transparent and he can see everything he’s not saying. Ryan stares back.

Neither of them mention Brendon sleeping in the back of the bus, or how he wasn’t earlier when he was supposed to be. Spencer knows too much and Ryan’s bones are shaking with it, wondering if he can see the evidence on his face.

Spencer stands and Ryan watches as he shakes his head gesturing to the curtain.

“You break it. You fix it.”

He doesn’t know how to fix something that doesn’t know it’s broken, so he piles it away instead. Ryan laughs. Spencer doesn’t.

The curtain in the back does nothing to disguise Brendon’s breathing. They both ignore it, anyway.

Ryan rolls his shoulders, says, quiet, “I won’t.”

Spencer’s eyes go soft and he says, “No. Not on purpose.”

Spencer’s still gentle, even when he leaves to his own bunk. Ryan wonders what he’s done to warrant any of it.  


.

  
Ryan shaking through his clothes, vibrating with the lights and music and Brendon.

He looks at Brendon, and every time, each city asks, _do you see all the colors?_  
  
Brendon sings in blues and greens, dances in purples and yellow, and Ryan wonders how many others see the silver and rubies. Spencer’s watching, and Ryan can feel the gaze burning through his back. He doesn’t look away.  
  
Ryan thinks, _how could I miss them._  
  
  
.  
  
  
It’s easy to compress the world down to flash and song and soul. It’s harder to rise up from it and not come back up choking.  
  
When Brendon’s singing to another town in another city, Spencer and Shane playing right along, over fifty miles from Vegas and Brendon seems to get wilder with it, he realizes he’s choking.  
  
Or so Brendon tells him, after, against his neck in another hotel miles and miles away from Vegas.

Brendon climbs into his lap, trails his fingers down before he leans in. He’s teeth and eager and burning and Ryan meets him in it.

  
.  
  
  
The trick is, Brendon’s magic.  
  
Ryan’s just trying to keep up.

.

Brendon bounces on the bus, ink still drying on a record deal, stares up at the stars like he has all of their secrets on his fingertips, and says, “There’s a lot out here.”

When he turns to Ryan, it’s with a bitten lip and raised eyebrows and adds, “I want to keep it all.” Ryan doesn’t tell him he already has it.

Instead, he says, “I’ll buy you a net,” and it’s worth it for the way Brendon’s head falls back when he laughs.

When the bus moves all the lights shine through the windows, invading each crack and filling every void with white, and Brendon’s still moving with it, creating and shaping his own rhythm inside a constructed beat.

The night glows with it and Ryan wants to call it a beginning.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Comments and Kudos are much appreciated & I'm rhymesofblau on tumblr.


End file.
